burning photograph
by happy birthday grandmummykins
Summary: "she hates him, and she loves him, just as she hates and loves herself. but the stars are crossed, and the last time he sees her smile is in a burning photograph." –jo/dean AU, for selene. rated for death.


**Dedicated to Selene because it's her birthday. And hopefully, the fic should get you interested in _Supernatural_. Possibly AU Jo/Dean. Word count: 1,768.**

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[burning photograph]

-::-

There are some moments where Dean Winchester will look at the crowd and see a laughing, young, _innocent _little girl with hair brighter than the sun, and his face will change from its usual expressionless stare to one of hope, only to slip away just as quickly. His memories are water, and she is a raindrop he wants to catch, to hold in his palm and cherish forever.

But water is slippery, and her memory is painful to touch.

-::-

When she first sees him, it's like a fairytale. Out of all the times a stupid member of the male population has ever looked at her, she doesn't see lust, she doesn't see him trying to objectify her and turn her into a sex toy. Maybe he isn't a chauvinist, maybe he is her dream.

But he leaves just as quickly, and Jo chuckles to herself. Nah, she'll manage. She doesn't need a man, especially not one who slips in and out of her life with a snap of a finger. Dean didn't care, so why should she?

_(My name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, and I think I'm in love with Dean Winchester.)_

-::-

"I've had enough," she tells him. "I've had enough."

And she's choking back tears because she hates being treated like she's just a burden, a backpack he has to carry around, a child who cannot fight. More than that, she's had enough of her mother's snapping whenever the topic of her father was brought up, she's had enough of being told she wasn't good enough, enough of everyone she cared about either leaving or treating her like cargo.

_I'm not a child, I am a warrior, a _hunter, she screams, fists rapping at the glass casing that separated her from the rest of the world until her knuckles bled and tears squeezed their way out of her eyes, that glass layer which prevented her from being heard. _Why won't you listen to me?_

But when the man in front of her looks around with real confusion in his emerald eyes, the rants fade inside her throat, and she chokes out a lie about chauvinism, getting her a lecture in return.

When he turns around again, she gives him a glare from behind his back, a glare for being a chauvinist pig, a glare for being a jerk, a glare for objectifying her, a glare for–

The EMF starts to go haywire, and Jo's thought train returns to the hunting track.

_(My name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, and I don't care about Dean Winchester.)_

-::-

She once heard someone say that fictitious women don't have to be strong women–they have to be realistic, interesting, diverse, _unique–_funny how the quote comes to mind when she's hacking away at straw dummies. Jo isn't unique. She is one in a million other little girls with false ideas planted in their heads about Prince Charming, just one in a million other infatuated idiots who stumbled across Dean Winchester and fell to their knees.

She hates him, and she loves him, just like how she hates and loves herself. She hates the way he can manipulate her to do anything he wants, even to be _bait._ She hates him, and she absolutely _loathes _his family, the group of Winchesters who care only about themselves, the people who got her father killed. How could she have ever thought Dean was any different? So Jo pours her anger into her calculated strikes against the straw dummy, and her malicious pleasure twists her lips upward in a snarl.

The image of her mother crying came into her mind, an image from yesterday and yet also an image from a childhood millions of years ago. Ellen wouldn't know, and little Jo would pretend she didn't see her mother crying as she wiped up the kitchen countertop, oblivious to the reasons why. The memories only makes Jo strike harder and harder at the dummies, fuel her resentment for the Winchesters, her blows getting quicker and quicker until she's a twirling ballerina in the midst of flying straw.

When she collapses into an exhausted heap, she can't tell if her face is wet from tears or sweat.

No matter how much hate Jo bears for Dean or his family, it will never compare to how much hate she harbors for herself–for loving him. And maybe her anger isn't directed at the Winchesters; maybe she just needs someone to blame for her own mistakes.

_(My name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, and I hate Dean Winchester.)_

-::-

When Sam–_Meg,_ she corrects herself–starts mocking her for the one-sided feelings for Dean, complete with the "despite how he's a complete and utter jerk" speech, she's surprised and scornful at first.

_You know nothing,_ she wants to say to what she suspects to be a drunk Sam. _You know nothing about me or my family. My name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, and I hate Dean Winchester. I hate and I love him, and I hate myself because I loved him. I don't care about the jerk's well-being; I hate him._

But as what appears to be Sam keeps on taunting her, tears start to form behind her eyes and she tells herself to get in control again, to stop the flow of salt from pouring out, to calm down and breathe. What he says isn't true, it will _never_ be true; there's no need to shed tears over something this trivial.

Things change again when he appears to save the day. The ice surrounding Jo's heart simply melts away, and when he stumbles back into the bar with a bullet in his shoulder, she can't help but tend to his wounds, chiding him for being a baby, just to let him know how she felt whenever he chided her.

_It's not love,_ she says to herself. _It's just that I'm a good person._

"Painkillers," Jo snaps, tossing the bottle of medicine to the wounded man, "for the road."

He glances down at the medicine for a second, looks back up with a forced smile–a smile which almost makes her loose her temper and snap completely–and finally pockets the bottle. "Thanks, Jo. I'll call if I find him." He turns his back and leaves.

As soon as he shuts the door, Jo smirks. "No, you won't," she thinks out loud.

_(My name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, and I just saved Dean Winchester.)_

-::-

She never understood why people kissed when they were dying until she is dying herself, lying in a pool of her own blood with her insides held in by a bandage. You had to die because just like everything else in the universe, Death _will_ come for you. No matter how fast you run, the end of your days will always catch up to you.

Jo has to die, but she doesn't want to die alone.

Jo has to die, but she wants to die for _something._

That's why she offers to make a bomb and stay behind with her finger on the activation button, waiting for the hellhounds to come and take her to Hell. "It'll give you guys time to kill the Devil," she explains when her mother begins to protest. Tears spring to her eyes, and Jo barely manages to choke out, "Mom, this might _literally_ be your last chance to treat me like an adult. Please take it?"

And she's begging on hind legs because she wants her life to mean something, because she wants her life _to be in her hands_ for once. Not once did she have absolute control–no one asked her about Dean Winchester dropping from the sky, no one asked her about whether or not she wanted no dad, no one asked her if she wanted to be born into this hunting life, no one asked Jo if she wanted to _die._ "Please just let me choose how I want to die."

It takes every ounce of willpower for her to keep a stoic face; with the pain and death hanging over her head, it was hard. When he kneels down in front of her with deep emerald eyes, tears burst from her eyes, and he kisses her on top of her head, a farewell kiss.

That's when Jo realizes her life is finally over, and her face simply crumples, her efforts of keeping an emotionless expression crumbling down.

_I'm going to die in a shop, a shop with hellhounds circling it. I'm going to be the bait, just like my dad. I'm going to _die. _My name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, and I'm going to _die.

She never feared the prospect of death–not until she was dying.

Words cannot begin to describe how relieved Jo is when Ellen offers to stay behind with her, to watch over her baby girl as she makes her heroic sacrifice. Jo doesn't want to die alone, but she doesn't want her mother to die either.

In the end, her selfishness overrides courage, and the dying girl lets Ellen stay with her to open the door and break the salt line.

But of course, nothing ends the way she wants to. She dies before she gets to press the button, and it ends with Ellen cuddling her close and whispering into her ear through her tears, the swan song of a shattered woman and a dead family.

The shop goes up in a cloud of flames.

_(My name is Joanna Beth Harvelle, and Dean Winchester couldn't save me.)_

-::-

Far away, a rough and gnarled hand tosses a photograph into the fire. "Family don't end with blood," he once said. "Family _never_ ends with blood." The sheer irony and the lies behind the statement has never been more glaringly obvious. There's no happy ending for a hunter.

The fire gnaws at Jo's face, a jovial face captured in time, and the last time he sees her smile is in a burning photograph.

[the end]

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**Ten points for you if you figured out that I wrote the fic first and ran out on ideas for the title.**


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